


A Visit to Worther Hall

by rispacooper



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:43:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rispacooper/pseuds/rispacooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson and Holmes on a case, with some painful revelations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Visit to Worther Hall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thea M.](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Thea+M.).



> Written for Yuletide_2007 for Thea M who requested only that Watson not be an idiot and Holmes not be an emotional ball of mush (her exact words).

The autumn of 1889 was a wet one, with a wind that seemed to have swept down from the glaciers of the North to set the stoutest man to shivering. Even the ancient oaks that lined the overgrown, neglected drive of Worther Hall had seemed to shudder away from the Norse Gods’ breath, what leaves left to them already heavy with silver frost. Clouds were beginning to roll in waves past the bright orb of the moon, and as I surveyed the bare, breathless landscape it seemed inconceivable that spring would ever come again.

It was a strange night for a respectable man to be out, and a strange place for him to be—a forgotten estate miles outside of London, isolate and apart from any neighboring villages, uninhabited by its proper owners for decades, or perhaps even centuries. It was even stranger then to find the front gate bolted with a new lock, the great entrance doors barred.

One of many puzzling facts I had encountered in the last few hours with my friend Sherlock Holmes and I doubted it would be the last. My mind held many questions, but I held them off as I stood guard, seeking to remain vigilant for any possible dangers.

I put my hand to my pocket to caress the hard outline of my service revolver and jerked my head up at the careful slide of a footstep on wet gravel—the first sound aside from my own breathing I had heard in some time.

In the evening gloom I caught a glimpse of motion and felt the elated staccato of my heartbeat slow. Heat rushed to my face to see the glowing red tip at the end of a thin cigarette.

“It is only me, Watson,” Holmes remarked with no small amount of amusement in his tone. He paused at the corner of the hall, where the shadows of oak and house merged, perhaps to put his cigarette back between his lips. Then Holmes himself emerged from the darkness into a slim beam of moonlight with apparent ease, despite how the shadows clung to the tobacco-stained ends of his fingers and grasped at the sharp lines of cheekbone and jaw. For one moment even the shifting clouds gave way to illuminate his brown greatcoat, his bare head, as though I had needed further proof that it was my dear friend beyond the gleam of his eyes as he observed my momentary alarm.

I felt myself straightening as I always did under that penetrating stare, knowing as few did the thrill of having that great mind focused on me.

“It is not yet so cold that I need a hat,” he remarked and though I tried to hide my astonishment, the flare of his cigar showed his slight, inwardly-mocking smile. “Even were your face not so happily easy to read, Watson, I know your habits, and I can feel your desire to again scold me for forgetting a hat in my dash to catch the train.”

“You do not take proper care of yourself,” I responded even with that warning and inhaled the last fragrant wisp of blue smoke as Holmes snuffed out his thin cigar on the side of the building. The ash would leave a small mark on the brick and mortar work that would likely go unnoticed by anyone but Holmes for another few centuries.

I thought perhaps Holmes granted me another of his cool smiles for that, his head bowing in passing acknowledgment of the obvious truth. I had witnessed the wreck of his exhaustion too many times to not feel alarm at his pallor and feverish eyes. He had once again begun to run himself haggard with too many cases, mysteries greater to him than his own well-being or my concern. He was now perhaps as white as his collar, yet as he had when I had inquired before, he waved one hand in languid dismissal of his health, before slipping back from whence he came, the dark swallowing him whole.

“This way,” his familiar voice commanded me and despite my misgivings I followed.

Holmes tread confidently ahead of me, and though not once did I detect him glancing back to me, he spoke as though he could read my every thought from my expression.

“Even in the unlikely event of discovery, Watson, there would be no charges pressed. Not by this scoundrel. I’d wager ten guineas on it.” Holmes spoke with certainty, plucking my worries from my mind if not laying them completely to rest. But when Holmes stopped before a low window and I beheld the ingenious wire and spring device he had used to ease the lock, I frowned.

My wife was a lovely, patient woman who easily forgave the many nights I had left her alone in order to be at Holmes’ side in his adventures, but even she might wonder at her husband locked up on a charge of Burglary. My patients would be suitably horrified.

“And yet you requested I arm myself.” I did not resist pointing out, if only to hear the impatient, half-amused snort Holmes gave as he climbed noiselessly through our point of entry.

“A precaution to ease your mind, my dear Watson, for I have learned it is easier to bring you along than to try to dissuade you from facing danger for my sake.”

Easier indeed that convincing him to cease facing danger at all. But even if I had insisted on accompanying him when he had first relayed his intention to visit this isolated place to-night, that remark was rather a case of pot and kettle, and when I replied to that effect, I glimpsed the warm gleam of good humour in Holmes’ eyes before he slipped inside the Hall and then leaned out the window to extend his pale hand to me.

I took his hand gladly, and once we were both inside the darkened, still house, Holmes closed the window behind us. Hours spent standing beneath one of the mighty oaks as the sun had set had assured us that none were at home, but Holmes kept his comments to whispers as we crept carefully down unknown passages, letting our eyes grow accustomed to the dark.

From what I could see with the cloud-filtered moonlight hard pressed to shine through filthy windows, the interior was older than the Tudor façade, though some attempts had been made over the years by ambitious owners to renovate the Hall into something modern. Yet it stubbornly remained a labyrinth of drafty rooms constructed of sturdy stone and wood, stripped even of the tapestries and rugs that some nobleman might have once used to warm himself on nights like this one. The occasional room contained the surprising odd furnishing, white-draped mattresses and dust-covered chairs, remnants of the wallpapering popular at the end of the last century. It seemed too great a house to be so ill-used, a loyal place still faithfully awaiting its master’s return.

After viewing three or four such rooms I stopped, foolishly wondering if Holmes had decided on the wrong house in his deductions.

“The fireplace!” Holmes broke triumphantly into my thoughts and I turned to find him crouched over a pile of soot in one of the smaller rooms. It might have been a sort of bedchamber once, but last seemed to have been pressed into a sitting room. It was decorated, square, with a high ceiling. It had a small window as well as another door aside from the one we had used, which presumably led to another room. The walls had been stripped of paintings but there were chairs and a table, buried in the same white cloth of abandonment, and a bureau next to an odd niche in the same wall as the other door, approximately four or five feet deep, where perhaps something large had gone once, large enough for the walls to have been built around it. There was only the faded print of wallpaper there now, as well as a great deal of dust.

“Our man has been here,” Holmes announced and though I opened my mouth to question him, I hesitated when Holmes dragged his slender fingers across the dirty hearth then rubbed the grey ash slowly between his thumb and forefinger. “You must see, Watson, that this fresh ash means this house has been occupied recently and, judging from the cigar ends thrown carelessly into the fire…” He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed, his eyes drifting closed in thought. “…a Persian formula, number Twenty-Nine I believe, which is only sold in one shop on Bond Street. The man using this fireplace must make frequent trips to London.”

Without the intelligent flame of his eyes to distract me I imagined the rings of exhaustion under them as I had seen back at Baker Street, the hollow marks at his cheeks. His mouth softened to something dream-like and then without warning his eyelids flew up, catching me in my perusal.

“That does not mean it’s this fellow, Gerard,” I countered, needlessly, for I knew Holmes would have his answer ready; the ash had only confirmed the solution he would have reached long before. Indeed, after a pause he shot me a look of disappointment and brushed his hands on his trousers as he stood. That it left him as smudged as schoolboy of course did not seem to bother him either, despite his usual fastidiousness regarding his appearance.

“You failed to detect the distinct medicinal odor of the ointment Gerard uses to relieve the ache of his war injuries,” Holmes admonished me and yet I could not but be pleased that Holmes still expected me to be as great as he, even if I continued to fail the tests. “You remarked only yesterday on the foul smell of the many cheap, false remedies sold by street vendors to anyone desperate enough, yet not willing to turn to morphine.”

As a doctor and a surgeon late of Her Majesty’s service, my opinions on those greedy, unscrupulous vendors selling fake cures were well-known, but I recalled this moment easily. I had spoken without thought during a stroll with Holmes, yet it had made him go still, pulling away from my stunned figure to chase after one such vendor, burying his sensitive nose in countless potions, searching, I realized now, for the one Gerard used.

“You would make an admirable detective, Watson, if you were aware of half of what you see,” Holmes remarked as though the words held sense to him. Perhaps he meant it for praise, but he turned from me without smiling to study the bricks of the chimney, peering with interest at minutiae I could not see. His fingers strummed almost nervously across the rough surface.

“Maybe I am content merely to share your genius with the world.”

“Hmm.” Holmes moved, running one palm over the faded, floral wall covering, listening to the thin crackle as pieces fell to the floor. My friend had often claimed to dislike how I portrayed his methods in my memoirs, and yet many times he had made a point to woo me with tales of the mysteries he had solved before we had met. For my chronicles, he claimed, but I often thought there was no pleasanter way to spend an afternoon. Countless exhilarating hours had been spent in our rooms at Baker Street, my body pressed close to the luxurious heat of an overstuffed chair as Holmes had built up and then unraveled puzzles greater than the secrets of the Orient, his flushed face hinting that he delighted in having me spellbound and breathless.

“We are here to observe to-night, Watson. I doubt there will be any events of interest for your pen, but I am, as always, glad of your company.”

The rush of warmth at Holmes’ heartfelt comment left me momentarily quiet, tracking his motions in the near-dark, the angling shadows created by his chilly smile. Before I could find words Holmes waved them away, uninterested in emotional demonstrations unless, it seemed, he was the one to make them.

I looked away, noting the odd niche once more, out of place in the otherwise symmetrical little room, leading me to imagine an older fireplace there, or something similar. Whatever the reasons for it, they were as forgotten as Worther Hall itself.

It was a better place than most for a wanted man to hide himself away, provided he lit few lights and kept quiet. For such a man as this Gerard was said to be, confidence artist and trickster, thief and seducer of innocents, it would seem a happy sanctuary.

“The man uses the same ointment from the same vendor—men who live a lie are often strict creatures of habit—and once I found the vendor I had only to ask a few questions.” Holmes came to stand with his hand on the back of a chair, his back to the small window. I raised my brows to imagine the clockwork motions of his clever brain as he studied me, knowing my habits and traits all too well.

He let out a short, pleased laugh at my reaction to his mind-reading but kept his back to the light, studying me freely. I allowed it as I tried and failed to follow the clues he had left for me, and for a few moments we rested in familiar, fraught silence.

“You wife remains most devoted to you, Watson, despite the risks you incur for the sake of adventure.” His pale hand closed upon the chair. “I am glad to see it.”

“My hat has been brushed?” I guessed, having heard this from him before, though I was certain his gaze had already seen and catalogued several other signs of Mary’s love for me. I was a fortunate man, but I knew it was no use to try convince Holmes to seek something similar, to speak to him of what joy would be his if he allowed another to care for him as he deserved, to share his heart as well as his mind, his home and his bed.

But marriage—and women—were subjects he avoided with the same determination that he hunted down men like Arthur Gerard, so I held my breath and watched Holmes sway as though some breeze had touched him. He was obviously already weakened by his obsessive pursuit of crime in the last weeks, and if it would have helped him to rest I would have played the dutiful friend once more and taken him home. But knowing as I did that he would insist upon remaining, I did not scold or voice my concern, I merely called him back to the moment.

“The business with the vendor?”

“Ah. Bridget.” His lips quirked, at the memory or my attempt at distraction I could not say. “You recall the partially-eaten cherry tart upon the table in her rooms? She spoke of Mr. Gerard with the interest of a potential lover but mentioned that he had an allergy to cherries, and she was too trim to be fond of sweets. You recall how she tried to force us out the door? I suspect another man was the cause, perhaps even hiding nearby.”

“Another man?” I did not hide my astonishment this time and Holmes drummed his fingers in a brief, excited motion.

“Judging from her rather cramped quarters, he would have to be of unusually short stature. In any event,” Holmes mused, his tone growing lighter, “Gerard has a like problem. He was seen ordering flowers—roses—and roses, those exceptional gifts to a hard world, have only one meaning.”

“I see no roses here.” I walked to the other door and peered into a room bare of belongings, save a bed and a small table. However, in another moment I noticed it was also bare of dust.

“Precisely, Watson. Some other lady is in his clutches now, and a wealthy one, to get such gifts. Upon learning that, it was no large matter to find the florist—where he had considerable credit, attained by claiming to be both nobility and listing this house as his address. From the vendor, to the florist, to the man himself if all goes as planned.”

“You ought to have spoken to the Police,” I remarked reproachfully, even if he had been correct. “If he knows there were questions asked about him, he will run.”

“I think not.” I heard Holmes take a few steps and when I did not feel him at my back, I turned to see him close to the window, looking out from the side without revealing his presence in the Hall. “I have met the lady in question.”

I could not hide my surprise, my utter stillness to hear his soft admission or the heat in his clear voice. “I have no doubt that you with your keen eye would devote many pages to her beauty, the fresh cream of her skin, the exquisite mouth…” he added and the shifting light from outside made him seem to tremble.

“Holmes!” With a slight stumble Holmes turned back to me. I nearly could not resist speaking again when he only continued to regard me with such an odd twist to his mouth.

“There was a happiness in her countenance that I do not see often enough.” Holmes paused to inhale, the sound seeming loud when I could not find words and so stood silent. “Moreover, Watson, I have heard her speak of him, and if I were a romantic man, I would say it was a deep feeling on both sides. One bolt and anyone, it seems, can be felled.”

“I am surprised,” I said at last, “that you should find such a subject interesting.”

“On the contrary, Watson,” Holmes corrected me in the tone he used when he knew he would leave me astonished with his powers of deduction. “I found the meeting very enlightening.”

“And you are certain?” I knew I stammered, put off balance by this new side of my friend, evident after only one meeting, but after a pause I felt my mouth turn up in a sharp grin of my own and I turned until it passed so that my friend would not guess at it.

“Though I had no previous knowledge of it, I suddenly recognized the blazing purity of the feeling in the eyes, her never-failing expectation of good from such a man, the selfless concern that will lead her willingly to face countless dangers on his behalf, and I heard the poorly-suppressed tremor in her voice to speak to his name. It is love, my dear Watson.”

“I suspect, were I to tell her the complete truth of him, she would denounce it and declare her intention to fight for him. Contradictory impulses that support my theory of a mind left muddled with passion. I saw then that this was the reason he had not done as experience would have told him he ought. He has no business or profit to be gained, and yet he lingers in the warmth of her gaze.” Some of the certainty left his tone at that last poetic pronouncement, replaced with a sad bemusement, and I imagined Holmes back at Baker Street with four or five shags of tobacco ready near his pipe to contemplate the whole situation. Now he only stood frozen with half his face caught by pale slivers of moonlight, the light nearly as pale as his skin.

“It would be painful to return to this place after that.” I shivered again at the chill that had begun to make my war wound ache and saw him give a start. He nodded slowly after a moment of apparent thought without glancing to me. Outside the Hall the clouds must have drifted back over the moon, stealing all but the faintest light and leaving me with only the impression of Holmes’ white hands and face, nearly the same shade as his collar.

“So I imagine. But he will, Watson. I wager he will have to leave her when he feels me closing in—to protect her or perhaps only her opinion of him. It makes the case of Mr. Gerard, enigmatic thief and liar, somewhat less than drearily mundane.”

“She will follow,” I protested and imagined the downward slant of Holmes’ brows. “If what you say is true than she will follow him, and wait, if it comes to that. His criminal activities, his misdeeds, real and imagined, they are nothing to true devotion.”

“Perhaps.” Holmes stepped back, drawing further into his beloved shadows. “In either case, her love will be the cause of his downfall.”

“You malign a steadfast heart, Holmes!” I cried. “Such a feeling might save the man. I’d go so far as to say he would agree with me, now that he has felt it stirring in his soul.”

His sharp mind peered inside of me once more, holding us both in a long, suspended moment before Holmes darted his gaze away, something I felt more than observed, my shoulders dropping. “You know more of the subject than I,” was the total of his response, and we fell into another silence marked only with weighted breath.

As with many things involving the fairer sex—or love—Holmes claimed no knowledge, claimed willful ignorance in fact, as though I had never seen the truth of his fierce, devoted heart or the holocausts that would burn in him on certain cases when justice had not been achieved. Burned too hot at times, and soon if Holmes were not careful they would rage so strongly they would leave nothing but an exhausted wreck of a man behind them, charred to the same ash he found so worthy of study.

“I did not mean to offend you, dear Watson,” Holmes spoke first, patting at his pockets with a wavering hand, no doubt wishing for a smoke.

One of the more harmless of his vices, nonetheless I frowned. It was an old, quiet war between us, going on for years with no sign of armistice, years in which I strove and in which, I sometimes felt, he took some pleasure in my striving. Yet with all of it the haze steady remained around him. He was a magician for all his protestations otherwise, astonishing me with tricks only too simple once he stopped to explain them.

Feeling foolish, I clenched my jaw tight. Whatever the problem, Holmes already had the answer and had moved to solve it. “What are we to do here then?”

“What do you see in this room, Watson?”

I lifted my eyebrows at being quizzed, but looked to the room with its cracked paper walls and streaked windows, the covered table and the doorway to the bedroom. It was a lonely room, with only the slender figure of Holmes standing out in the center. I related all of that and he shook his head.

“You _see_ , Watson, but the picture you paint is a fanciful one. This is a dark, neglected room in a much-abused house. Attributing emotions that are not doubtless makes you a skilled storyteller, but suggest little of the facts of the science I have laid before you.”

“If I tell you this case with all its diversions is a mere distraction for me, that there is a great city filled with a hundred thousand such tales, you would scarcely believe me. The things I have seen as I have sought my answers would shock the average reader of your chronicles, Watson. What strange, cruel events occur every day with no one to take notice of them, the horrid, ludicrous banality of each crime, each mystery, each following the other until it becomes clear that it is no accident, it cannot be an accident, and yet no matter how much longer I search, how deeper I delve into the filth, how much I give, I cannot find proof of it. I cannot!”

His voice rose, high and trembling and he turned, allowing me to see the dark cast to his cheeks. I was at his side as the shaking took him, the sign of impending nervous collapse that Holmes had too long ignored.

“I cannot allow innocents to live in the shadow of such evil,” Holmes murmured, and I felt as though he made it a promise, though to whom I could not guess. I passed a shaking hand over his feverishly warm brow and he fell silent.

I took his arm and there was no sign of his remarkable strength as I urged him to the chair, alarming me as greatly as his lack of protest. His skin was dry, his pulse wild underneath my fingertips. I turned toward him and wondered if he watched me, his parted lips still curved in faint amusement, aimed at something he would never share.

Yet he could barely move for the moment and with a low admonishment that would go unheeded I took my hands from his face and slid them down his body. Holmes inhaled, sharply, as though he had his tobacco after all, but he doubtless caught my purpose and so did not stop me as my fingers traced over his ribs through his waistcoat and down his sides.

His flask was smooth metal, as warm as he was. I pulled it from his coat and pressed it blindly to his hands. His fingers slid over the steel to clasp mine as I held it to his lips, his trembling easing as he drank from it. He had not eaten, I guessed. And he had barely slept, instead wandering the streets of London as he had declared in his heated, unsteady speech, and whatever his meaning in that I shuddered from it. My thoughts were only of Holmes in this moment, and the strange, excited fever that had brought him to this again and what he might do without the guidance of a stronger voice.

“I am close,” Holmes promised me fervently, firm as cold iron, flaring up with life before my eyes. “I can feel it.”

It was Holmes being fanciful now, at the mercy of those few emotions he allowed himself to feel, curiosity, vengeance, hunger. His throat worked noisily as he swallowed the remaining drops of brandy and his head fell back at last. I straightened, moving to put the empty flask in my own pocket, and Holmes extended one long arm, his hand not quite touching mine. We remained like that as colours and light passed through his eyes but did not stay.

“I wonder if, someday, I will be able to leave this.” For a startling moment it was as though Holmes begged me for the answer to his mad question, hoping I had plucked it from the murky corner of the alleys we had traveled together. I shook my head without understanding and Holmes let his hand fall.

“Perhaps it will be possible in years to come to find me tired of puzzles and crime, living a quiet life in a house like this one, with only my experiments to occupy me. Perhaps I will even be as happy as you are now, Watson.”

“Alone?” I wondered as his eyes dropped closed.

“Would my friend Watson come to visit if I had no mysteries to offer him?” Holmes mused, too dispassionate for the flood of pain it caused me, the hot tear like the piercing of a bullet through my flesh. To turn back was to see him stretched out in the white-covered chair, strain telling only at his brow, the clear waters of his voice untroubled as his pose while he imagined I would abandon him.

At the far away entrance of the house, a door was shut with some force, the sound carrying through empty hallways to our lonely little room.

“Quickly, Watson,” was all Holmes managed, though I was already at the outer door. The dim light of a single thick candle was visible, so I ducked back, breathing hard at the firm hold Holmes took on my shoulders, how his hands slid down to my waist and yanked me back against him as he hid us both in the niche.

“Quiet,” he spoke with his lips to my very ear, close enough for me to catch the scent of the brandy there and the cloud of smoke that forever followed him.

Footsteps sounded and I pulled back, pressing Holmes to the wall in the darkness. I tried to count the moments of tense, thrilling suspense and could not, measured out with the furious beats of my heart, too quick to count and still no match for the thunder in Holmes.

Shadows flickered on the opposite wall, pierced by the first wavering hint of candlelight, for the bedroom door was open and Mr. Arthur Gerard, schemer, liar, and lovelorn thief had returned to his borrowed home and bed.

I half-turned despite Holmes tightened hold to watch the play of light of the candle, the fluttering shape of a man’s body. I wondered about his face, recalling Holmes’ words, if he were a man of delicate, almost feminine beauty, or slim-hipped and strong. If he were a broad-shouldered, square-jawed brute, or something ordinary, his eyes lit with a strange fire.

The man sighed, a crushed sound, the kind that told of wounds to the soul.

I ignored as best I could the long fingers at my ribs, spanning wide to keep me near. I had made no move to go, though recriminations were locked tight in my chest, perhaps by the same hold.

“Holmes,” I breathed carefully, my tongue rich with the forgotten scents of bachelor days, days of this without end. Holmes had not turned and with my head to the lit wall, I felt his short exhalation at the nape of my neck.

“He is not alone.”

I had no time to ask his meaning or to wonder at his lack of surprise. A quiet feminine cry echoed down the corridors, longing and fear mixed in such a combination to make any man’s chest swell with heroic thoughts, perhaps even that of Sherlock Holmes. We were pressed together close enough for me to feel the quickening beat of his heart as Gerard cried out the name, “Julia!” and ran to her, stumbling as men blind in love did.

I followed their sounds; his confusion, the answering fear and hope as he found her in the shadowed hall. My pricking ears could hear his questions, how and why she had come, the pounding of his heart as though it was in my own chest. I heard her answers, punctuated with half-sobs and what might have been pale, grasping fingers curling into wool as she mentioned her suspicions, Holmes himself and his visit, and how she had followed Gerard here.

“Then…you know the truth? What I am. What I have done.” He asked, a man who had coldly lied often enough, in one guise after another, caught out now by his Julia. Holmes had been correct again, had somehow seen this truth in a collection of red petals and thorns, yet I held my breath.

My hands were empty; I left one at my side and put the other to the wall, my palm caressing crumbling paper. Following me, Holmes took one hand from me at last and put it next to mine over the faded flower print. I studied the faint outline of his rounded nails, recalled the yellow of smoke and chemical stains at his knuckles, and imagined the scene that lay beyond his curving fingers.

“Yes,” said Julia, when simple was all that was needed. A man would rage with the thirst of Tantalus to have such a creature steady at his side, her actions declaration enough.

“You should not be here,” Gerard protested after too long a moment, marking him as a poor liar and a poorer thief-of-hearts.

“I will not leave you now,” the brave lady responded and I turned my mouth up to see my prediction true as well, though my grin left me as Gerard showed himself a man of too much reason.

“You _are_ a fool, aren’t you?” I heard the sneer in his voice, the steps taken to put a distance between them, and I angled my head down. “I’ve hundreds of girls like you, didn’t your detective tell you? Didn’t he explain what I have done?”

“No.” The choked word slipped past my lips, unnoticed, for her pressed cruelly on, lashing her with fact.

“I will go to prison in disgrace and ruin, there among the other thieves, where I belong. Don’t you understand, I have gone too far now.”

“Watson.” Holmes’ warning was only breath on my neck and fingers slipping beneath my coat to press roughly to my waist.

“I understand.”

I brought up my gaze as Julia’s voice rose, too full of knowledge of the depths of man might fall to as he ran from love’s trap, aware he find it waiting for him regardless, now that he was an unworthy thing. Or perhaps knowing he had felt himself unworthy all along and what a man without hope might turn himself to.

But pity did not sing out in her lovely voice as she measured out silence and words and offered a single vow.

“I do not care.” The breath burned in my lungs. I shook with the force of it and made myself exhale, knowing she would be rejected, stubbornly and stupidly rejected.

I wished to speak and could not, my lip quivering until I bit it. Holmes would know of my agitation but I could not pull away.

He moved. She followed, silent but for the press of her slippers on the floor.

“Julia,” Gerard put all the graces into her name and still tried to deny her and I shook as I turned my head.

“Holmes.” I scarcely exhaled the word. It was crime to witness this as surely as sneaking into this house and this room, but with his mouth once more to my ear, Holmes just formed my name with his lips.

“Julia.” Miles away, the thief Holmes had thought perhaps more than just a mundane study fled from the heart he had thought to steal, breathless with fear to find it given freely. He flickered in the light of his only candle, displayed on the bare wall as he ended with his back to the same faded paper that trapped us.

“Arthur,” the lady answered firmly as her curved shape joined his in the shadow play. For a single instant they held apart, fluttering, the space between them vast, and then their forms merged.

Pain split me in two at their youthful sweetness, forced to stand as I was and view the tableau of love’s hopes and urgent desires as Holmes must have first seen it in her eyes. As he must have first recognized it, as familiar and forgotten as the weight of torturous chains to a man too many years in thrall.

I gasped silently, my face growing hot as did the rest of my body, burning against the iron band beneath my ribs. Their kiss forced upon us a hushed moment of unwanted awareness in which our hearts seemed to beat too loudly, and no matter how we struggled, neither of us could fill his lungs with air.

Holmes shifted in the dark at my back when he ought to have been still, pulling away from me as much as our pose would allow, and I found myself leaning back into the surprising heat he radiated, shivering uncontrollably to find myself warm. Holmes abruptly stopped moving, straight with tension like I had never felt in him, twisting his head only to end with his breath stirring my hair.

“Watson,” he mouthed my name, startled by my insistence and I allowed myself the fancy that whatever Holmes had expected in this late visit, he had not dreamed of this.

My fingers tightened, cracking paper into dust. I shuddered for that too, at the hot agony as they were forced to pull apart if only to breathe, and I sought out thoughts of gentle nights on cool pillows, the familiar, smiling face of Mary. It all slipped from me, as always, banished by a single request.

Holmes stood without moving in the darkness, curved in a hard bow around me, his breath coming in erratic gasps. Should I turn, his eyes would flare too bright before he would close them.

I knew his habits too, and shifted. His hand clasped mine, pressed it out flat against the wall with the same strength that allowed him to bend fireplace pokers, as though that would stop me. Yet he shook with his same illness, or something more.

“Watson…?” I nearly did not know the sound of my name as one kiss became two, four, perhaps a dozen, was not even certain I had truly heard it. Gerard gave a weak, pitiable gasp and I took my eyes from restless, straining shadows.

With the bravery he had never doubted, I turned and faced my friend Sherlock Holmes shaking in the dark, his eyes catching what flickering light fell to us before the lids slid down. His chest expanded, his lips quirking bitterly upward as he head fell heavily back to the wall. He opened his mouth, his breathing growing louder.

Of all the things Holmes had witnessed prowling through his opium dens and Whitehall, wandering happily over isolated moors, of all of that, he closed his eyes here.

I captured his hand still on the wall and slid my fingers through his and splayed them wide. I felt them warm and dry and open, curled ever-so-slightly around mine. I imagined the bones under his skin and traced them gently.

“Watson...” The clear voice that so often commanded stopped short of it now, obeying the demand for silence or weakening resolve, I could not tell and for the first time in our friendship I had no desire to ask.

“We should not,” another pleaded, reveling in the freedom to speak, and was answered with needful kisses, soft and succulent. I pictured her beauty, her ascendance over his lean, hungry body, glowing curves and waves of hair, red lips and giving flesh warming him as nothing else would.

Without mercy I studied my dearest friend as he listened to the bold embrace and dreaming the dotting of sweat at his lip, the darkening at his cheekbones as though he raged with fever. His sharp face would be haunted now, taken over by the same hunger thrilling through me that I could still feel in our close-pressed bodies. Holmes was not a handsome man or a dashing one, but I could not cease staring at him. He was new to me, to the world, and I could sense awareness of my knowledge in his pained, labored breathing, and though I knew it nothing but a trick of my mind, his mouth formed its cruel crescent and Holmes brought his eyelids up.

I thought, vaguely, that if we had not been forced to silence this would not have been, but the curse of it held us fast and I tasted his bitterness on my mouth.

“Julia…” The thief succumbed with a sigh that told of the most exquisite agonies, right and wrong giving way to touch. An ache answered him as swirling shadows took advantage of time and place.

Whispers of fabric enflamed not just my mind and a new awareness sprang to life in Holmes’ eyes and heavy heartbeat, making me imagine once again the details of what Holmes had seen and where he had been, what he thought at the press of flesh, if he grew tempted as lonely men did.

I exhaled and silence told me that Holmes considered me with a frown of vague confusion, his head still tilted back to expose his throat. He breathed in and I reveled in that as well, even as his mind worked. Beneath my hand was his, and when we first heard the creak of bedsprings his turned, his palm sliding against mine, damp now, warmer. His fingers seemed to cling before he stopped them. His mouth tried to cut through me with a grin but the wound was already mine. I wet my lips, swallowing a never-ending thirst.

“Dear Holmes” I wished forbidden words to trip from my tongue as I seized his hand and stepped closer to his thin, shaking body. As though I warmed him, he gave one startled jerk that nearly knocked him from his feet. There came a groan from the other room, Gerard’s voice rich with disbelief to behold her hunger, to hear the curiosity that led her to ask without shame.

It was her right to demand. My legs weakened, but I did not fall to my knees. With strength unknown to myself I stayed on my feet and allowed myself only the briefest touches at his hand, along his palm. The heat from him made me shiver, and at the slight motion Holmes twitched, creating a deeper feeling of hot friction between us.

I choked on my surprise, swallowing that as well as Julia expressed her pleasure, because he obeyed her, as he must. He gave to her all that she wished, and her rising cries spurred me on in my daring. I moved closer and in Holmes’ silence for the first time I saw questions, the never-ending, ever-raging desire for more directed at me until no lingering thoughts of propriety would stop me.

Madness. This was no boyhood game, no soldier’s relief, but I put a hand to my friend’s chest and the throb of that organ he so denied. He pushed himself to the wall, his hand seizing until his fingers twined with mine. I firmed my grip and stepped nearer, shuddering at how easily his other hand returned to my side, his fingers digging hard into my flesh, gripping hard before he inevitably moved his hand on, from my ribs to my stomach, my chest, feeling my racing heart.

The merest touch and through my clothing I felt his inquiring fingertips glance across polished buttons, the repaired stitching that Mary—my Mary—had done with her own hands.

Holmes twisted his head down, averting his gaze, his breath on my shoulder, and I scarcely looked to the tangle of dark motion offered us by the candlelight. I directed my hand down to the evidence of my friend’s manhood, the proof of our shared desire for this. The lady gasped, wet, desperate, and I echoed the sound to feel the pulse at my fingertips.

Holmes trembled in earnest as I traced the thick shape of him, smoothing my palm down the ridge in his trousers. His shudder made me bold, offering another lingering exploration, letting him know my curiosity through the fabric but Holmes caught my wrist with fierce desperation and held me still.

He held me, not meeting my eyes, using all his great strength, it seemed, to hold me from him.

Holmes. I pulled in air heady with the scent of him, as sweet and poisonous as his experiments, intoxicating as his brandy and cocaine, heated though none but me seemed to ever feel it. He lifted his head and turned back to me, his lips flat together. I thought of the fluidity of expression in his fine mouth and shook my head, sensing his alarm and knowing he did not understand and would have to be shown the way. His hold was tight enough to bruise my skin, and with it marking me I rubbed slow circles with my palm, spreading my fingers to encompass more of him.

Holmes’ lips parted, close to my cheek. He breathed out, sudden, harsh, but did not push me from him. Without ceasing I pressed in until his grip was painful, an echoing throb of pain to my own arousal. I took much, pulling in greedy mouthfuls of the dark air we shared, trembling against his cheek as he allowed the intimate embrace.

The sounds that were not Holmes were distant now; I narrowed my all to him, the drops of salt at his throat that I wished to sample, the hard, shivering muscles of his body, the hand tight on mine, long fingers wrapped unforgiving on the pounding rhythm of my pulse.

“Watson,” he murmured at last, his voice dry in my mad fantasy. I licked my lips and slowed my touch to reach for buttons. Holmes jerked once more, closing his eyes when I felt the answering jump against my questing fingers. Had I been able, had we been alone, I still could not have spoken. I thought I moved, putting my face close to his shoulder, letting him feel my own desires. They hummed between us in the small space of the niche like delicate strains of his music. I had him trapped between myself and the wall with barely a touch at all and yet when he felt the throbbing press against him his breathing hitched.

“Watson,” he shaped my name again silently, wildly, surging into my grip as I stroked him. His strength seemed to leave him; his breath rasped against my ear, his hand falling from the wall to my coat, my hip. He did not allow me even a shadowed hint of his face; he arched away, twisting to the side with unbearable urgency, leaving me to wonder how much more I could give him, how much pleasure could he stand. I knew if he were able, if I had not done this to him, he would demand more if only to appease his curiosity. My body leaned into him at the thought and I took a taste of the skin beneath his ear. Our breathing matched, frightened and hot, and then his hand grasped at my side to pull me to him.

He rocked forward, unsteady, and said only my name.

“John,” I ordered quietly, twisting with the need to thrust back but holding myself still. My breath caught but our audience had no mind for us now and Holmes was mine to command. Confused, his voice slow and thick with arousal, Holmes echoed me, my Christian name burning against my ear as he gasped it in time to quick thrusts, growing more ragged with each slippery hot push into my palm, and every encouragement I wished to moan to him. I pressed kisses to his throat and jaw instead, lingering on the salty, earthen flavour to his skin, and the acidic scent of vinegar and solvents that was cologne to Holmes.

The darkness was maddening. I pressed closer so that every scrap of motion was mine, pawing like an animal at scratching wool to reach the man underneath, sliding my free hand to his neck though even in the dark he would not turn his face to mine. But though the black before my eyes left me needful and wanting, Holmes used it to give himself to me, shuddering freely at each touch, accepting of every new trespass of my lips. His every smell and motion was mine, but his face was denied me. The wave of hot anger that shook me at the thought only made me caress him further, my fingers tightening. And for that Holmes only squeezed himself deeper into my arms, twisting to allow me more.

I could feel the flush along his body and sought to ease it, wishing every slick burst between my fingers would heal him, stroking until Holmes could only gasp and twitch against me, losing even words, his mouth soft and wet on my cheek. His fingers dug into my skin, holding on despite everything and even with the pain of it I continued to drive him to this, turning him into a fierce, lustful creature, a man, hungry and writhing with need. For a moment I held him thus, and then I took another taste of his skin, speaking my permission into his ear and then withdrawing to drag my teeth on the lobe of his ear because I could not watch the deathly pleasure take him. With a final push of my thumb he shuddered and fell, his back arched and his lips soft with agonizing dreams he could not share.

The burning stain spread past my hands to my clothing and I opened my mouth at the new scent between us.

The lady called out in soft, startled words without meaning, reaching through her crisis, and I held the perspiring, breathless body of Sherlock Holmes in my arms. I counted the beats of his heart, and mine, as the last of his seed spilled from him. Holmes remained turned from me, and when I knew I would not see his face, I closed my eyes to know his full weight upon me.

With shivers of my own I petted and soothed, carefully touching his back and shoulders as one might caress a child frightened of the dark, and all too quickly I felt his heart slow. I looked away as I slid my hand from his neck and Holmes moved to stand on his own, keeping it from clenching when he remained at a foot’s distance. I imagined him frowning as he often did at an unexpected result to an experiment while he pulled at the fabric of his coat, making little noise as he attended to himself. I thought of my handkerchief but did not yet pull it out.

If there had been more light, I wondered at what I would have seen in him, if I would have seen as I often had at Baker Street, ripe with unnatural colour, roses in his cheeks no longer at odds with the pallor of illness. I had never believed in the banked fire of his eyes, never before having seen him at peace without also seeing the mark of the needle in his arm.

It was my turn to look aside, some of the heat slipping away, though I stiffened to feel his observant gaze at last returned to me. Without raising my head I absorbed his distant stance, while words of the tenderest affection were whispered not yards from us. Pretending I could see through the wall, I turned toward them and so did not see Holmes step forward.

One hand on my shoulder was all my warning and then he had me to the wall, had me pinned as an insect to a board with the force of his hawk-like gaze as he slid apart the front of my trousers and took me in his hand. I gasped. I was hard from holding him and listening to his choked, wild cries as he had achieved release. I knew he watched me, and I sensed that his mind, now cleared of the haze of passion, was remembering, pulling together too much, and I was a man twice marked.

His grip commanded though his mouth still could not, each long, clever finger crushing me to oblivion, and I looked up, the darkness hiding my first silent cry of ecstasy, though I knew his eyes were on my mouth, hungry for knowledge, of this, of me. His mind made him too quick a study, and with me arching toward him he twisted his hand, when I threw my head back it was only too simple to imagine his sharp, open-mouthed grin. A sound left me, a grunt that wished to be something else, something like agreement, approval at the fire I would spark in his grey eyes. Once more, and then again, he repeated the motion, eager to earn greater responses, perhaps only to learn more, and as I bit back my moans for him I felt the taste like old grapes in my mouth.

He left me without air, staring mercilessly down upon me as he stroked, slow, then fast as I had done; his attention never left my face as though he knew that I peered through the dark for a hint of his gaze.

Beneath his attentions I was a trembling, aching wreck, hollow and then filling with need. My steady hands flailed out, reaching out and finding his chest. With my eyes squeezed shut I tore them from him and dropped them behind me to the crumbling wallpaper. My body bared or covered, it did not matter in this dark space. Holmes would see it all, when I had taken so much more from him.

I could not speak, we were not alone, tormented and saved with an audience. I shifted along the wall, rolling into his hands, shuddering when he wrapped them both around my shaft for a moment, and then raised one to my chest.

“Watson,” Holmes bit out in a barest whisper, startling me into looking up before he closed his mouth. For the first time I felt that he glanced away. He worked hard to breathe, as did I, his nostrils flaring when I pushed toward his delicate, punishing touch. He slowed and I curled my hands to fists, wishing him to see my reaction, the twisting knife of pleasure in my stomach, how good it was.

He was aroused still, tight-lipped and furious above me. His hand went to my shoulders, down to the furious, shameful actions between us, only to return to my face time and time again. His fingertips sought out my brow, my eyes, my cheeks, running across my lips with curious energy. I kissed them and heard him catch his breath, and guessed at his confusion from how he hesitated before bringing his fingers to my mouth once more.

His brows would slant down at my willingness to play the lady for him, seeking to understand what I did not understand myself. But there was no stopping my soiled, parted lips as I offered myself as catamite. My stomach knotted but the icy clutch of fear was nothing to the white-hot streaks of Holmes’ touch. I gasped for him, licking the saliva from my mouth, tasting ash on his fingers. I was a shameful portrait of invitation and with all that should have stopped him, he did not, and did not slow again when he easily could have.

He was shaking, weakened despite everything, and knowing what I could do to him, even with all his powers of deduction, I could not be stopped. His fingers one by one I welcomed into my mouth, curling my tongue around them, startling both of us with my hunger before I released him. His mouth worked, but whatever his words he did not allow them to escape, and then with tremors that rocked him he collapsed forward, surrounding me. I pulled in air and caught him doing the same before he once more turned his head. My hands came up, found his face rough with a faint trace of beard, and though he flinched he returned his gaze to me.

His eyes were hidden to me as he peered through dark to watch me as I reached the heights of delirium and for them I spilled thick and hot onto his hand and wrist. My face burned, but I could not stop, even when it became painful I gasped and thrust into his stilled fingers. There was only an old, constant ache in me when my body was finally emptied and then we stood together without moving, without seeing, regarding each other with unappeased need.

I could not move, the enormity of our actions only just beginning to push to the forefront of my mind; the crime committed, against the laws of man, against my fair wife, against Holmes himself, for I had taken from him. My thoughts worked slowly, and though I could not say the same for Holmes, I knew similar feelings held him still. The shock of that realization made me wet my mouth, seeking in vain the words to soothe away the terror that left him frozen. I turned instead, another mere inch, and felt the burn as Holmes pulled in a stunned breath, our lips perilously close to meeting.

Holmes closed his eyes, his lashes nearly brushing my cheek. I exhaled and with strength of my own pulled my hands from him for the second time. As though Holmes had only been awaiting such a sign, he stepped back, turning his face to the dim light. I could imagine only too well the mess I had made of him, the colour on his face, the alarming brightness in his eyes, the mussed state of his clothing and the patches of obvious dampness. I had no doubt I looked much the same and for the first time, looked away from the small flickering rays of candlelight.

I straightened up and without moving toward me, Holmes put out a hand to just glance a touch to my shoulder, his chest expanding with a deep breath. His fingers curled into his palm before his hand dropped to his side as though I would not feel how they trembled.

Opposite him, the light on the far wall shimmered and grew a touch brighter as though bodies no longer blocked the candle, and with a start I realized that the two lovers were whispering to each other, words of love perhaps or plans for the future. Holmes turned as I did, and though I strained I caught only a quiet mention of the trains before their words drifted too low to hear, spoken into skin.

I raised my head and Holmes turned to me, no doubt displeased at missing information. I did not attempt to deny being the cause and his lack of response was his answer as well. When he set his shoulders and turned from me I put my handkerchief to use, stowing it in a pocket before refastening the buttons that Mary had sewn for me. Where my thoughts had been too slow a moment before, they would not stop racing now, and I was left unsteady and stumbling, struggling to recall myself to time and place.

We remained silent as our skin cooled and our minds cleared, listening as words already indistinct slurred and slipped into mere murmurs and then finally nothing as the thief and his Julia fell asleep in each other’s arms. For the moment, this forgotten place would shelter them but their reassurances held no interest for me now even if Holmes could still bear to listen attentively.

I turned to him and found his head back, his eyes closed and his mouth a flat line. Whatever the dreams behind his eyes, he tossed them aside with a sudden, cruel shrug and focused intently upon me, perhaps reading all of me in that single glance. His throat moved and then he directed his gaze elsewhere.

With a wave of his hand he slipped from the niche and then took the few steps to the door. Without a sound he headed back down the same long corridor we had traveled not long before, finding his way easily this time.

I did not wish to turn my eyes to the opened door of the occupied bedroom as we passed it, but found myself slowing, helplessly observing the curves of entangled bodies beneath the meager blanket, the broad hand curled in the mass of her hair, the slim body curled against his. Holmes strode on far ahead of me, and I directed my attention once more to the empty house, the rooms used for storing long-forgotten furnishings. We found our window and it took only moments to crawl through and then I watched Holmes reset the fastening. As simple as that there would be no sign we had ever come to this place.

The cold air was a shock on my warm face, stealing the breath from me and bringing new life to old wounds. I put my trembling, sticky hands into the pockets of my coat and turned my eyes to the wall.

“I think if we hurry in time to catch the last train, I might return to Baker Street in time for my nightly pipe.” Holmes remarked as he stepped from the building and toward the long drive of Worther Hall. I knew the truth of what he said, that he would have a smoke before he finally retired, just as he would piece together the remnants of tobacco in the morning before breakfast for another. His vices, his long-standing habits, as familiar to me as the taste of his skin.

He dipped his hand into a pocket and retrieved another cigarette. The red light flared around his pale fingers and for a moment, through the wavy wisps of smoke, he looked to me.

Frustration and despair clawed at me and I turned from his stare. I had only one thought and could not arrange my mind to demand it. I never was quick enough.

“Or perhaps with this case resolved…” Holmes went on as though nothing remarkable had occurred, his voice smooth.

“Resolved?” My mouth formed the question while my eyes drifted back to the silent, black lines of the Hall.

“There is little point in turning him over to the Police if he will do it himself, as I believe he will,” Holmes answered as though waiting on my response, demanding my eyes return to him as he dropped his match to the ground. Without its light I still felt how he left his eyes on me, his breath hitching in a way that left my face stinging even in the cold. When I turned he turned his face up, studying the moon, clear of clouds if only for the moment. “The mystery is all that interests me, and that is over.”

My pause was brief and then I shook my head. Holmes closed his lips around the thin cigar and inhaled the poison, his cheeks hollowing. My tongue remained behind my teeth and Holmes pulled the cigarette away, blue smoke streaming from his mouth as he waited.

As with most of Holmes’ deductions, I knew there were facts that he had seen that I had missed, theories of logic tried and rejected, and though whenever I had attempted the method before I had failed, I wished now to cut through his many faces and know one truth beyond what we had found in that room. One lesson had I successfully learned from him, and I knew his habits better than any other.

“Why did we come here to-night, Holmes?” Holmes had been as taken unaware as I, if only at the strength of our need. I made my hands fists and stood shaking before him and the Sherlock Holmes I had weakened and reduced to human took a stumbling step backward with surprise. Surprise he would never have shown had his mind truly been clear of feeling.

“Watson,” he spoke only my name but I recalled another, whispered with such longing against my very ear that I had trembled for him. I could not bear it and turned my face away.

“They will…he will turn himself in to the Yard inspectors?” I asked instead, the words thick and halting in my throat.

“He turned her as she lay sleeping, doubtless so he would not disturb her when he rose,” Holmes remarked with only a slight pause. There was little of the usual warmth in his voice as he laid out his brilliant guesswork for me to marvel at. I looked to him and thought he seemed chilled, as tall and twisted as the trees around us.

“And from that…?” I wondered despite myself, knowing the blackguard could simply be leaving her after ruining her.

“I believe he knows now he cannot avoid his fate and has no wish to involve the object of his nobler desires,” Holmes offered instantly, his attitude almost placating. “He must do it.”

“Toss her away to keep her?” I could not keep the sardonic edge from my voice and Holmes shook his head.

“Her opinion of him.” He spoke negligently, pronouncing as always without offering proof. He was so rarely mistaken that even I had to acknowledge that he did not need it. Nonetheless, I chased after him futilely as ever, my voice rising.

“And that is enough? That is her reward?”

Holmes moved forward once more with another shrug. I thought of our debate earlier, my mouth dry and filled with ash. My arguments had already poured from me and been wiped from his skin.

“You must see that he is right,” the quiet words nearly did not survive the cutting wind but they brought my head up, had me shaking with the force of what I had already told him once before.

Holmes already had his back to me and kept his pace brisk. I shifted and my limbs felt as clumsy and slow as my mind. My thoughts, my questions were already slipping from me, suffering for the cold end he presented, and the belief ringing through his words.

“With this case resolved I might only stop at my rooms for a change of clothing. There is still a greater mystery waiting for me in London’s many dens of vice.”

“Surely you need your rest,” the words burst from me, but Holmes was walking steadily and silently down the dark path of the drive. I imagined his half-smile at so easily distracting me but I did not hide my distress. It held me to my place and for a moment Holmes paused, glancing over one shoulder.

“You will come along?” He was so far from me that his voice seemed strange, though when I turned toward it, Holmes was again the man I knew.

“And your wife must be missing you, my dear Watson,” he finished, as oblique as light from a diamond, forcing me with few words to think of Mary, my practice, my responsibilities other than Holmes. I must have imagined a soft entreaty, another mad fancy.

I looked after him, the rising moon still partially obscured by the shifting clouds. Holmes seemed to fall into a black abyss and vanish from my sight and with my thoughts a sick whirl and my heart a clamoring echo I followed him, struggling to see at least his greatcoat as the light faded and left me blind. My service revolver shifted in my pocket next to an empty flask and the soiled handkerchief, and I put my hand to it as I moved too slowly after him, peering into the chasm that had swallowed him, shivering at the spray of cold, wet air on my neck.

 

The End


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